Cryptocurrency exchanges such as Bitcoin.de and Coinbase are the safest in terms of password security while Bitstamp and Livecoin are most prone to financial theft due to unsafe security practices, according to a latest study.
Password manager Dashlane examined password and account security on 35 of the world's most popular cryptocurrency exchanges before drawing rankings.
The study, which was conducted between March 12 to 19, tested exchanges that allow users to create accounts with browsers while those requiring a software or mobile app download were excluded.
The findings showed that over 70 percent leave their users' accounts perilously exposed to financial theft due to unsafe password practices.
"With your bank account, credit cards, bitcoin, and other digital assets potentially stored on the exchange, it's critical that your account is locked down on the security front," Emmanuel Schalit, CEO at Dashlane said in a statement.
"The fact that most exchanges allow their users to create incredibly weak passwords should serve as a wake-up call to the entire industry."
The study revealed that a staggering 43 percent of exchanges let users create accounts using passwords with seven or fewer characters, and 34 percent do not require alphanumeric passwords.
Dashlane's testers were repeatedly able to create accounts with weak passwords, such as "12345" and "password," and in one case, using just the letter "a".
Additionally, Dashlane found that less than 50 percent of exchanges provided users with password strength assessment tools during the account creation process.
When compared to results of Dashlane's 2017 rankings of leading consumer websites, the cryptocurrency exchanges performed poorly.
In the consumer rankings, which examined sites such as Apple, Facebook, and PayPal, only 36 percent received a failing score whereas 71 percent of cryptocurrency exchanges failed in Dashlane 2018's examination.
